History—the rational and methodical study of the human past—was invented by a single man just under twenty-five hundred years ago, Herodotus, known since Roman times as “the Father of History.” Herodotus’ Histories—a chatty, dizzily digressive nine-volume account of the Persian Wars of 490 to 479 B.C., in which a wobbly coalition of squabbling Greek city-states twice repulsed the greatest expeditionary force the world had ever seen—represented the first extended prose narrative about a major historical event. (Or, indeed, about virtually anything.)

A major theme of the Histories is the way in which time can effect surprising changes in the fortunes and reputations of empires, cities, and men; all the more appropriate, then, that Herodotus’ reputation has once again been riding very high. In the academy, his technique, once derided as haphazard, has earned newfound respect, while his popularity among ordinary readers will likely get a boost from the publication of perhaps the most densely annotated, richly illustrated, and user-friendly edition of his Histories ever to appear: “The Landmark Herodotus”, edited by Robert B. Strassler and bristling with appendices, by a phalanx of experts, on everything from the design of Athenian warships to ancient units of liquid measure. (Readers interested in throwing a wine tasting à la grecque will be grateful to know that one amphora was equal to a hundred and forty-four kotyles.)

Modern editors, attracted by the epic war story, have been as likely as not to call the work “The Persian Wars,” but Herodotus himself refers to his text simply as the publication of his historiē—his “research” or “inquiry.” The (to us) familiar-looking word historiē would to Herodotus’ audience have had a vaguely clinical air, coming, as it did, from the vocabulary of the newborn field of natural science. (Not coincidentally, the cradle of this scientific ferment was Ionia, a swath of Greek communities in coastal Asia Minor, just to the north of Halicarnassus, the historian’s birthplace.) The word only came to mean “history” in our sense because of the impact of Herodotus’ text.